


the smile on your face just like the old days

by WonderBoy



Series: Growing Up Ain't What It Seems [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Family Feels, Family Reunions, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 05:12:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13517277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderBoy/pseuds/WonderBoy
Summary: The years pass on Earth in a slow haze. Missing them doesn't get easier, it just becomes part of the norm.Until one day, it isn't anymore.





	the smile on your face just like the old days

**Author's Note:**

> Wow another piece that almost made me cry
> 
> And this time I wrote most of it in public that's...fun.
> 
> The first chapter is about the Holt family (obviously), but there will also be a reunion for Lance and his family, Hunk and his family, and Shiro and his family. And we'll (probably) get to see how Keith, Allura, and Coran fit into or find their way in these extended families throughout these pieces too, at least a little.
> 
> The title comes from "Can You See Me" by Krista Siegfrids, which is also something that makes me want to cry so check it out if you're in that kind of mood.
> 
> *I have also gotten it on good authority that "In Our Bedroom After the War" by Stars also adds an emotional impact to this piece if "Can You See Me" is not your speed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Colleen was ten, she fell in love with the stars. When Colleen was forty-five, she cursed the stars.

When Colleen was ten, she fell in love with the sky.

She never made it to the sky. Numbers and formulas made her head spin – and _not_ in a good way – but the stars overhead felt like millions of dazzling companions in the otherwise dark expanse of night. Her father told her stories of the stars, mapping pictures out of their masses with his hands. Even after he was gone, when she looked to the sky, it felt like he was looking down on her, telling her his stories and making plans.

When Colleen was twenty, she fell in love.

Sam was four years her senior, and charming in the shy, awkward way he bought her flowers and asked about her days. Sam was a scientist, learning to go among the stars. He told her stories of the stars too, of the people who traveled among them and what they discovered. There was less magic in Sam’s stories than her father’s, but they made her feel even closer to the stars.

When Colleen was twenty-seven, Sam went to stars for the first time.

She missed him desperately, even with a young, energetic boy to distract her through most of the day. She worried about him, so far away from her, in the vast unknown of space. But she trusted the stars to keep watch over him and bring him home to her and their son once again. They had lots of stories to tell him when he returned, and she knew he would have even more stories to tell them about the stars.

When Colleen was forty-four, her faith in the starts faltered for the first time.

Her beautiful children went rushing, tumbling, after their father’s footsteps, reaching for the stars all the while. At just twenty-one, Matt was given a role on the newest trip to space: The Kerberos Mission. Sam had talked about the prep for the mission, the farthest anyone would have gone in Earth’s solar system, for years. Now it would be taking both of her boys away for two months.

At the end of the first month, Colleen and Katie celebrated Matt’s twenty-second birthday by themselves. Colleen drove them out, as far away from the city as they could get, so the two could look up at the sky, and imagine they could see the ship bringing their boys home already headed their way.

At the end of the fifth month, three months later than they were supposed to return, the Garrison issued an official statement that the crew was missing.

At the end of the sixth month, they were presented with two folded flags carried by two strange officers and an impersonal letter declaring them dead.

When Colleen was forty-five, she cursed the stars.

The Galaxy Garrison presented her with a third flag. A third impersonal letter. A third strange officer telling her a flight practice accident had led to the death of her “adoptive son Pidge Gunderson.”

Colleen had fallen in love with the stars. Sam had fallen in love with the stars. They taught their children to love the stars. But the stars did not love them back. The stars just took, and took, and took.

Colleen cursed the stars.

She moved to the city.

The lights of the city blocked out the stars. Even on the quietest night, only the moon shone overhead.

Colleen hated the stars.

But she had never felt so alone without them.

When Colleen was fifty-eight, she couldn’t escape the stars anymore.

Every news station in the country was tuned into the story of the arrival of a UFO near the Garrison’s launch site. The radios were buzzing with talk of their “visitors from the stars.”

But the Garrison refused to comment on the arrivals. The government ordered reporters to cease their speculation. The reprieve was short-lived. Neighbors and shop keepers, people passing on the street, all talked about the visitors.

She couldn’t care less. The stars couldn’t even bring home her family, why would she care about strangers they brought?

When Colleen was fifty-eight, there was a knock on her door.

When Colleen was fifty-eight, a new strange officer stood in the hallway of her apartment building, explaining they had her new address on file and he had been requested to escort visitors to see her.

When Colleen was fifty-eight, she heard Sam’s voice again for the first time in fourteen years, pushing the strange officer out of his way and insisting he didn’t need an escort to see his wife.

Sam stood before her, in a shiny new Garrison uniform, smiling like he was just coming home from another day at work. The years had worn on him, slimming him down and adding a shake to his steady form that Colleen had never imagined befalling him. But his eyes shone like they always had.

“Sorry to make you wait for us, Leena.”

Matt and Katie flanked their father. Matt, now into his thirties, stood tall and strong. A scar cut down his cheek and a bruise sat under his opposite eye, but he smiled the same toothy grin she loved, that she had so desperately missed.

Colleen almost didn’t recognize Katie. Her daughter had left home a tiny slip of a fifteen-year-old girl, and returned a woman of twenty-eight. Her light-colored hair brushed over broad shoulders, and she stood with the strength and attention of a solider. Matt’s old glasses sat on the bridge of her nose, sliding up as Katie smiled shyly at her.

When Colleen was fifty-eight, she cried like she hadn’t thought she could any more.

Her family held her as she cried, their own sobs adding to the cacophony of curses and thanks that slipped from her lips.

When Colleen was fifty-eight, her family took her across the state to the Garrison launch site. Somewhere she hadn’t visited in nearly fifteen years.

They introduced her to the pilot of the Kerberos mission, who apologized for not being able to return her family to her long ago, despite how she and her family insisted he stop his apologies. Katie introduced her to “paladins,” a term she still couldn’t wrap her head around, with implications that horrified her as much as they impressed her. But she could see the care in the familiar way the other paladins and Katie interacted, and she knew they had taken care of her girl.

When Colleen was fifty-eight, she met visitors from the stars.

A beautiful princess and a colorful advisor of an alien race greeted her with the upmost warmth and hospitality. They thanked her for the time she had allowed them with her family, though it wasn’t by her choice.

When Colleen was fifty-eight, she laid under the stars, flanked by her family, and her family’s new, extended family, and she listened to their stories of the life they had made, and the lives they had saved, up among the stars.

When Colleen was fifty-eight, she fell back in love with the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come yell at me, request new things, or just stalk the progress of other fics on tumblr @ thathopelessromantic.tumblr.com


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